


To Long, To Be Longed, and Belonged

by Ifyouthknew



Category: Psych (TV 2006)
Genre: 3/4 are feelings, Alternate Universe, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dubious Consent, First Time, M/M, POV Carlton Lassiter, Pining, Porn with Feelings, Romance, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-26
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:48:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28333392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ifyouthknew/pseuds/Ifyouthknew
Summary: Is longing for someone the same as wishing to be longed by them?This is just a story of his wild fantasy about a 17-year-old Little Prince and his 26-year-old babysitter.
Relationships: Carlton Lassiter/Shawn Spencer
Comments: 17
Kudos: 24





	1. Chapter 1

The first time I met Little Prince I knew he was a snob. He was standing on the porch of his father’s house, leaning against the doorframe, two hands in the comfort of his pockets, a dark green sweater plastered with countless white reindeers haphazardly tucked inside the faded jeans, while his father and I carried all his luggage to my car. Spoiled little brat. I bet those hands never touched anything with a rough surface before.

Even though I was sure I didn’t show any signs of repulsion on my face, his father apologized, closing the lid of my trunk, though it was likely only out of formality, “Sorry about Shawn. He’s got attitude problems.”

Like that would suddenly shine a bright light on him and make me look at him differently. But there isn’t much of a choice when it comes to commenting on a superior’s son in front of the superior. “It’s okay. All teens do.”

I didn’t take up the job of babysitting Head Detective Spencer’s 17-year-old son voluntarily. He asked; I said yes. But it still didn’t count as voluntary. Back then I was only a beat cop, the bottom of the ladder. The rumor had it Spencer was considering retirement, so I thought if he put in a good word for me in front of the chief before he left, I would be out of the misery of patrolling day in and day out sooner. It wasn’t the most respectable thing I did for my career but I justified it with the notion that I could do so much more and everyone has to sacrifice something when looking at the bigger picture.

Spencer was heading off to Florida for about a month to search for a new house and settle down the day after Christmas and leaving Little Prince under my care. His old beach house would be rented to a tourist family. If it was up to me, I would say he was old enough to fend for himself. Little Prince probably would have agreed.

But what Spencer wanted was for me to show him what it was like to be a young police officer, to be specific, me. I had no idea how to achieve that goal. Take him to work? Tell him to write down what he’s observed? Nonetheless, I felt elated that Spencer thought of me as a potential role model for his son. Another requirement was not to let him starve to death, which I could easily manage.

“Carlton Lassiter,” I greeted, reaching out my hand.

Little Prince glanced at it then at my face, his expression saying nothing except pure cold hatred, and decided to leave my hand hanging in the air. He climbed into the passenger seat without a word. Oh, it would be a blast for me and him, I thought bitterly.

I said goodbye to Spencer and wished him a safe trip. Little Prince didn’t. Spencer didn’t seem surprised.

On the drive to my apartment, the dusk fell insidiously as the streetlights took up the job left by the sun. He couldn’t seem to keep still next to me, always stretching a muscle here and there as if my car seat offended him. I cast many glares in his direction but he insisted on looking out of the window, so I wasn’t sure if he noticed my resentment. At least he was silent. I was good with silence, I thought naively before he started making noises. Whines, grunts, groans. It was obviously a cry for attention. He was daring me to ask “what?!”

I wasn’t going to fall for this kind of trap and bring myself down to his level. All I needed to do was focus on the road.

“What?!” I barked, yielding to my itching impatience.

“Nothing.”

That was the first word he said to me— _Nothing_. How typical of a teenager. He was waiting for me to inquire further, I could tell. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.

Ten minutes later, I asked again, “What?!”

“Nothing.”

He rolled down the window and laid his head in the crook of his arm, an elbow and a forehead poking outside. Cold winds blew harshly inside, taking away the only little comfort left for me that was endeared by every sane person in winter in the northern hemisphere—warmth.

“Do that if you want your head crushed.”

He didn’t move. I could swear I saw him even scooting further out. I had met people like him. Hell, I deal with people like him all day long, people who look at order and authority like they are a challenge. I could see it—Little Prince behind bars crying and waiting for his father to bail him out.

I snorted. If this is what I’m gonna with for a whole month, I better set the tone straight and show him I’m no average push-over from the start.

Steadying the steering wheel with one hand, eyes trained on the road ahead, I leaned over, grabbed the wrist of his offending arm, and yanked him inside.

“Hey!” he protested, trying to wriggle his wrist out of my grasp. I didn’t let go. Instead, I squeezed harder. “Ow! Ow! Ow! It hurts!” When pulling didn’t work either, he resorted to shaking.

I yanked again. It did wonders for even though I didn’t have my eyes on him, I could feel him tensing up, angling his body uncomfortably. He was paying attention now. A cloud of guilt hovered over my hard-won satisfaction.

“Listen to me carefully,” I warned. “I don’t know how your parents raised you, but when you’re in my house, you listen to my rules. When I say stand, you don’t sit. When I say run, you don’t crawl. Got it?”

“We’re in your car. Not your house. Unless, of course, you live in your car. In that case, I feel sorry for you.”

I tossed his wrist away. While he rolled up his sleeve to check for the damage I had inflicted, I closed the window and switched on the car door lock. He kneaded the muscle with his thumb. I felt like his—

“What are you? My evil foster father?” he accused.

I was leaning more toward _evil foster brother_ instead.

“I’m not that older than you,” I said incredulously, my gaze fleeting to the rearview mirror to check my appearance in self-consciousness. When I glanced at him, I realized he might have caught me doing it because his eyes were lingering on my face.

He wasn’t staring. He was dissecting as if he had been the coroner, and I merely a cold stiff corpse on the table. It caught me off guard. Never had I ever been looked at that way before, like I was see-through, a ghost wandering about in human habitat, and he a ghostbuster. I didn’t dare to meet his eyes, afraid my eyes would inadvertently spill too much no matter how much I prided myself as a man who had his many secrets deeply sealed. I tried to convince my mind that intuition was ridiculous but still I was begging him to find another target silently.

“Your Magnum P.I. mustache threw me off,” he said finally. “I’m excellent at judging people’s age normally. How old are you then?

“26.”

Little Prince huffed and sneered. I couldn’t tell what he meant by that reaction. Did he think I look way older than 26 or that 26 was considered old in his definition?

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he replied.

Enough with the _Nothings_ , I wanted to yell but resisted the temptation. I had already snapped once. A second time would turn my image into a complete bad guy instead of just a serious person who did everything by the book.

“Lose the stache,” he said. “It doesn’t flatter you.”

Like I would take his advice. To retaliate, I said, “Lose your long hair. It makes you look like a tramp.”

“What?” His voice was filled with disbelief.

It hit me I wasn’t picky enough with my choice of words. I corrected myself hastily, even though I didn’t care that his fragile feeling was hurt. “I mean a homeless guy. N—Not a whore. A hobo. I’m not saying you’re—”

“I know what you mean,” he said simply, his voice smaller and tinged with hurt. He didn’t come off as the sensitive type, so I didn’t understand why he was playing this little charade. To throw me off my course, I could only imagine.

I didn’t know why I bothered explaining. A little offense might be good for him, considering he didn’t hesitate to offend me. Perhaps at that time, I was thinking I couldn’t have him running to his daddy complaining about me calling him a whore.

When I was beginning to think we would return to the heaven of ignoring each other during the rest of the ride, his hand touched my mustache out of nowhere. The car lurched to the left, nearly going off the lane.

“What was that?!” I hissed.

“Nothing,” he answered with a smile. It was a real smile. I had to admit it was a lovely smile. Not cunning, not contemptuous. Not too many teeth, not too few either. The first smile I had seen on him and the first mistake he made. Now I knew all the edges were just a front. And it was the first bait I took before he reeled me in completely and I started gasping for water on his boat.

I wish I had realized back then that smile was a curse for both of us. But that wasn’t possible then.

The impulse of touching his hair back rose inside of me. Perhaps I could mask it as a payback for him being handsy. As I was pondering over the feasibility of it, he looked out at the street again and resumed his gloominess. I was disappointed but relieved at the same time.

I looked away and clenched my teeth as to not let my face disclose anything. What was I thinking? It was frightening the way I gave in so easily. Did he see me faltering? What would he think of me if he did?

“ _Follow my rule_ —exactly how he raised me,” Little Prince said. “I’m glad he’s gone.”

“He’ll be back in a month.”

“I wish he wouldn’t.”

I tapped on the steering wheel. Playing therapist wasn’t my strongest suit. Parents leave scars. Get over it. I hate listening to others’ problems.

“He’s normally way more annoying than what you witnessed earlier,” he added, afraid my lack of response was out of my lack of understanding regarding his father. “He’s just taken over by guilt recently.”

“I heard about the divorce,” I said, to keep the conversation going. I really needed to wake up.

“He wants me to go to Florida with him. To start anew, he said. I won’t, by the way. I’ll be an adult by the time he starts moving.”

Spencer had told me he was waiting for his son to graduate high school before he uprooted his life completely. “And you’ll be off to college,” I said, not taking a side yet, though I pitied the older man.

“I’m not going to college.”

“Why?”

He didn’t answer. We locked our eyes for a second before he looked away.

“Does he know?”

Little Prince shook his head.

“Why didn’t you go with your mother after the divorce if you dislike him so much?” I asked. It looked like I had pinched a nerve. He squirmed on his seat.

“She has other plans.”

I didn’t continue to pry, though I showed my dismay with a heavy sigh. I wanted to say if his mother really cared for him, he wouldn’t be just one of her plans that didn’t fit in her schedule, but I had a feeling those might not be the right words. I had learned people would trade niceties over harsh truths on most days. Dumb.

When we reached my apartment, he dropped onto the couch as soon as he laid his eyes on it and went to sleep, leaving his luggage in the center of my living room. He said he would unpack in the morning when I shook his back, but I was trying to tell him I had tidied up my bedroom for him earlier today and the couch was meant for me.

He was so insistent on pretending to be asleep that I didn’t bother to wake him up. Bringing a blanket for him, I turned in not long afterward. In my sleep, my own father said he was going to take me to Florida. Unlike Little Prince, I was glad. I ran off to the old Sonora to say goodbye to Sherriff Hank the second I heard the news.

* * *

The next day, I woke up at my usual hour at 6 a.m. Though I was off duty for the last three days, my body hadn’t adjusted. It might as well be this way. Only one day left. Today was one of those rare days in a year I resented my job.

Little Prince was lying on his stomach, one arm dangling off the couch. He was still asleep. After I got back from my jog, I found him in the exact same position drooling on the leather cover. I regretted not making him go with me. If I didn’t wake him up now, I was sure he would sleep till noon. That’s the case with all idle minds. They don’t cherish time.

“Spencer!” I shouted.

He grumbled and cracked open his eyes. To hasten his sobering, I lifted the blanket off him. He curled up into a ball as the cold wind replaced his warmth like he had done to me in the car.

“The bathroom’s in the bedroom. You’ll find what you need there. Hurry up, we’re going out in 20 minutes.”

He sat up, blinked his eyes at me. The way he licked his lips, I could tell he wanted to say something. Perhaps it was to protest or to ask about the details, but he stumbled over to the bathroom in silence, his clothes rumpled, his hair unkempt, more like a hobo, only to return a minute later to the living room fully-clothed.

“Need new outfits,” he mumbled as he squatted down to open one of his suitcases. The bulge under his jeans attacked my eyes. Morning—What a wonderful time.

I took him to a café one block away. I sat down at my usual seat at the small table outside the store.

“Breakfast,” he said, raising his eyebrows, pulling out the chair opposite me. “You’re one of those weirdos who treat breakfast like a real meal.” His tone was mocking.

“I do.” I was amused he would make a comment like that. Breakfast is the most essential meal in a day. I can skip lunch, dinner, but I have to have a proper breakfast. Suddenly, I felt old.

“You go out for breakfast every day?” He sat down, leafing through the menu quickly.

“Whenever I can.”

“You take your guest out for breakfast whenever you can?” he asked, his tone casual, his face hidden behind the raised menu.

But the question was anything but casual. It was too suggestive to slip away from my notice. He stopped flipping through the pages, doing nothing other than waiting for my answer.

I would be lying if I said what he was implying hadn’t crossed my mind, but being too wild a deed, it simply wasn’t considered as a motive by me. I wasn’t guilty of anything. I was just being a polite host who refused to leave his guest alone.

“I don’t have many guests.” That was my vague answer that didn’t constitute a lie.

“I figured.” He put down the menu and sized me up with his intense gaze again. I wondered whether he realized he would do that to people sometimes.

“How?”

“Well, for starters, your manners of treating your guest.” He leaned back, hands laced together behind his head, tilting the chair till it was only supported by its hind legs. 

“My manners?” I asked in shock. How dare he accused me of my manners when he had got none? “Excuse me, I brought you to breakfast. I didn’t have to do that.”

“Oh, please! You did that because you’re lonely.” Confidence rolled off him like lava spilling out of an erupting volcano. “Like when you agreed to take me in. You want company,” he added. “You could’ve just adopted a puppy.”

“If that were the reason, I would have found a better company than you. You’re not that special.”

He clamped up. What did he expect? For me to admit this was a date? What would he get out from it? My embarrassment? I hated being read like a book, but I wished he would tell me more about me.

Luckily the waitress came then. I placed my order. When she turned to Little Prince, he simply cocked his chin at me and said, “I’ll have what he has.”

“Your home is not Christmassy at all, Lassie,” he said after we were served our breakfast.

“Don’t call me that.” I liked it. I would have liked it if he had called me any other way. The image of him calling that name in my bed jumped into my head. _Oh god, I’m delusional._

“You can nickname me if you want,” he said, scrambled eggs occupying his mouth.

“I already did.”

“What is it?”

“Little Prince.”

He shrugged and took a sip of his black coffee. And another sip. Still, that didn’t suppress the twitch at the corner of his mouth. He was amused, maybe even cared for it.

“So my dad is the king?”

“The way he barks orders at the station, sure, he’s the king. Everyone’s afraid of him, even the chief once in a while.”

“That’s my old man. Your bark wasn’t too lousy either,” he said. “ _My house, my rule_ ,” he mimicked my voice yesterday in the car. “It wasn’t perfect but I could give you some tips if you want to go full Henry.”

I laughed at the way I acted before and at the way he treated it as a joke. He was actually fun to be with. I guessed that asshole attitude was just for his father only. What amazed me was that I had never warmed up to anyone this quick.

“I’m good but thanks,” I said with a smile.

When I started reading the newspaper, I caught him glancing at me multiple times. I pretended I wasn’t aware of any of that even though I was overjoyed when he did. Not a printed word had been taken in when I finished the last page.

“Lassie,” he started after I had folded the newspaper, “I’ve got to get something off my chest.”

My heart skipped a beat. I was already calculating my response to his upcoming confession that would resonate with my own budding feeling toward him. Mostly, I imagined turning him down gently and him refusing to accept my refusal. Like I said, I was delusional that day.

“You have to lose that mustache,” he said, with a strong shake of his head, his fist pounding lightly on the table. “I can’t look at it for a whole month. It feels nice and smooth, I’ll give you that, but it looks ridiculous! Every time I look at it, I feel like it’s biting your face off. Lassie, you have such a pretty face. Why sabotage it?”

It made me unease. Not many had commented on my look, not even my own mother. Though he seemed to be fixated on the one thing which I deemed as one of my favorite characteristics, which I groomed meticulously so as to appear neat and mature, and he didn’t say what I had expected him to say, a lukewarm stream tumbled down inside me and it had nothing to do with the coffee. _Anyone who gives you a second look and you squeak. Real nice, pal. Care to find someone more pathetic than you?_

I gave Little Prince a deadpan, stabbed the bacon with my fork, and brought it to my mouth.

“I’ll make you a deal,” he said, unrelenting. “You get rid of _that_.” He pointed at my mustache as if naming it one more time would taint his mouth. “I’ll cut my hair.”

I lifted my head and thought the opportunity too hard to pass.

“Deal,” I said without hesitation.

I didn’t hate his hair as much as he might have thought. I had gotten used to it. But I couldn’t bring myself to change my appearance for him, that would be too much of a telltale sign, so I seized the offer to do it under the pretense that my despise toward his hobo hair was so strong I would rather give up my precious mustache to rid him of it. Truth be told, at that point, he could dress me up like I were a doll all he wanted and I wouldn’t have minded.

Little Prince beamed and asked me where the nearest barbershop was. I pointed in its direction. My stomach knotted for the territory I had entered was an unknown, therefore a scary place. The walls were closing in quickly, the ceiling dropping inch by inch. I could do nothing to stop it.

It was the second day I had met Little Prince and like a lonely old soul he saw me as, I fell for the younger man helplessly. Like in 90 percent of romantic novels and movies, it was love at first sight—though not technically, I thought he was a prick for the first few hours—but a sicker and more twisted version. Not that I had seen many of those, for the record.

The reasons for my decadence? I wished I had known.

I lost my appetite for the rest of my food and I watched him devour every last bit of his. Sometimes he would cast me a look and smile then dodge my eyes. For someone so sure of himself, it came as a surprise to me he could be shy as well. It was a look suitable for his age. I kept wondering how the king would react if I abducted his Little Prince and eloped with him. Then I started doing the math about how long I would go to jail for the stacks of crimes on my shoulders.

But when his knees bumped into mine, all I could think of was him on my bed, opening his legs for me, screaming his version of my name.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (The following Chapter Notes may seem too serious to encounter in a smut-oriented fic. I solemnly swear I would quit being so serious for the rest of this year.)
> 
> It’s two o’clock in the morning and I can’t sleep. The windows are rattling against the wind like a perpetuating drumroll because my roommate thought it was best to leave them half-open as it’d be too stuffy to close them fully and too chilly to open them all the way. They know my anxious heart too well. I have to get up to write this note before I finish editing the next part of the story tomorrow.
> 
> I applaud you for whatever that has carried you here despite those suggestive things I wrote in the previous chapter. But I’d like to remind you you may want to stop for a second and reconsider now. It has come to my knowledge that people could still read my story and find the content uncomfortable even though I said “17” in the summary, “Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings,” rated “Explicit,” and tagged “Dubious Consent.” As of now, this fic will start using the “Underage” warning, and Lassiter’s age will be specified in the summary.
> 
> If you’re still unsure, let me be as specific as I can, as I am willing to—There _is_ a large age gap between a 17-year-old Shawn and 26-year-old Lassiter; there _is_ a power imbalance; the writer does _not_ think in black and white, especially when it comes to the fictional world. Chew on that, hope for the worst about what’s to come, and decide for yourself whether you want to persist because your appetite and curiosity are big enough to kill you and your cat and have a taste of the world that exist in grey or tap out for the sake of your own sanity when you still have the chance. I wouldn’t judge you either way. I trust you to make your own choice.
> 
> If against all odds, you reach the ending, I just hope you gain a little bit of insight into why I chose Lassiter’s POV or simply enjoy the ride of yet another smut. But still, it probably wouldn’t counteract all the caustic things you could stumble upon on the slippery road there. Personally, I believe, and I will carry that belief to my grave, what I’ve written is about love. I just feel sorry I can’t convince everyone that.
> 
> Open the windows but baby, it’s cold outside; close them but you may miss the month of May…but there’s always another choice—wait and let the incessant rattling run its course, though the wind will not stop buffeting for a sleepless soul on demand.
> 
> Happy New Year’s Eve, everyone. I wish 2021 would treat you better.
> 
> 12.31.2020

After breakfast, he told me he was meeting his friend Guster at his house, “Gus” in short. It felt like a slap in the face, to be honest. It hadn’t even occurred to me it might be just one of his silly habits to play with people’s names. I jumped the gun, again. Saw the sign that wasn’t there, again. Swooned for the wrong person, again.

But maybe, just maybe, this Gus could be someone he was secretly pining for, like the slightly older cop he had met yesterday.

I dropped him off and asked him when I should pick him up. Gus was polite to me but distant. He shook my hand like a businessman encountered with his opponent. It turned out Shawn was supposed to stay with his family but Spencer didn’t trust him to stay away from troubles here. It wasn’t necessary information for me, but he said it anyway as if it could miraculously provoke guilt in me for separating their Butch and Sundance.

He asked Shawn rather than me when he could drop by at my place. It felt like I was going to get inspected.

I rode my bicycle to the top of a hill to clear my head, but it was an unsuccessful move. I was alone with my unrestrained thoughts. The afternoon did nothing but enhance my lust. I had to make stops several times because the seat started chaffing my private parts. After that day, I learned to never bike when I desire someone. I should have done something more productive, like helping out at the station. Fortunately, I was going back to work tomorrow.

I picked Shawn up around six. We stopped by the barbershop we mentioned in the morning. When the barber asked him how long he would like his hair to be, he turned to me.

I pointed at myself in confusion.

“Yes. I’m asking you, Lassie.”

I walked to his side. Shawn was sitting at a brown barber chair, looking at me in the mirror expectantly. I stared back. Slowly, my arm lifted, like a toddler approaching a hen for the first time in their life, I brushed his hair, messed it first, then straightened it. He didn’t move away from my touch but kept still. It was as soft as I had anticipated. I failed to find an equivalence for it, every feeling between my fingers, under my fingertips, in my fingernails—new. Suddenly I didn’t want him to lose the hobo hair anymore.

I noticed the barber’s unreadable look in the mirror was fastly turning into a glare directed at me. I had forgotten how long I was standing there repeating my movement. I pinched a streak of Shawn’s hair and gestured a length hurriedly before taking off. When I pushed open the front door so I could dash to my apartment, as the wind chimes taunted and shamed me, I heard Shawn tell the barber, “He just needs some time to make up his mind. It’s not what you think.”

Could it be true what he said? Was everything an illusion conjured up by my crazy brain? I ran. No. I fled the scene. Tomorrow, tomorrow, I would be my usual self. Tomorrow, everything would get back on track. Tomorrow, I would be a proud lawful citizen again.

I unpacked Shawn’s stuff, knowing he would never get to it. I regretfully found a small white teddy bear in one of the suitcases. If _this_ didn’t wake me up, I was afraid nothing would. I threw it on the bed and dared not to look at it again.

Picking up the historic novel I had been reading for a week, I laid on the couch. But I lost my focus soon and started making up lewd love stories about one young soldier and his younger cousin.

I grunted and sprang to my feet, stepped into my bedroom again. The bear was lying on the bedsheet innocently and staring at the ceiling.

Shawn hadn’t been back. I added one more thing to my sin—I grabbed the bear and sniffed it. I let out a heavy sigh—It only smelled like suitcases. But still, I hugged it tightly against my chest, kissed its nose. A few hairs accidentally got into my mouth.

“Ah!” I grunted again and banged my forehead against the wall, my fingers digging into the bear’s soft skin mirthlessly. This was not me, I thought over and over. I was just going through a long dry spell. This was not me.

* * *

For the next week, I took him to work every day. I didn’t have to introduce him. Almost everyone down at the station who had a higher rank than me knew Henry Spencer’s kid. He was liked by all. People out of nowhere would pat his back, squeeze his shoulder, and ask how he had been. The air within ten feet radius around him was more humid and chipper. I couldn’t begin to fathom to carry myself like he did. However hard to admit, I envied him deeply. Only if I could articulate that well or just not tense up when anyone came close to me. I had no memory of being that young. I had been 17, but never had I ever been that young.

He must have come here often since he had been a kid. He was still a kid, I reminded myself. What was the point of this anyway, if he knew more about the station than I did?

He got bored easily. One day he told me he helped a detective solve a case when I was having a bathroom break. I didn’t believe him back then, thought he was joking. He tagged along with the patrolling, sweet-talking my partner into liking him more than me. Only after five days did he inform me his father never let him ride along because he thought it was dangerous, and him too reckless. It hit me I should have thought things through first, but he was like a slime-coated snail, impossible to shake off once he climbed onto your branch.

I didn’t know what he got out of it. Clearly, he didn’t enjoy my work. Hell, I didn’t enjoy my work. In my weaker moments, I had contemplated the idea that he might have loved spending time with me. But it couldn’t possibly be true.

He asked if I could go to the gun range with him one day. A boy’s a boy. I smiled knowingly. Perhaps I could teach him some technics. He would be impressed and I could have an excuse to get close to him. However, life has all sorts of interesting turns and bends. The reality was he just wanted to show off how impeccable his aim was. Shamelessly, he even pointed out my stance was too rigid. He told me to relax, standing behind me with two hands hovered over my hip.

I snapped around the moment his hands laid on me. Long after my skin had lost its contact, it could still count ten fingers where it was touched.

I crowded him back into a wall and growled, “Don’t touch me.”

He swallowed and nodded, looking over my shoulder, not meeting my eyes.

That was the only logical reaction I could throw out. I wasn’t angry at him. I was angry at myself, at how my body would treat the innocent contact of someone as something sexual. The truth was, had his hands stayed there longer, my body would have betrayed the darkest corner of my mind.

He came into the living room and apologized before he turned in that night, dressed in his pajamas, a toothbrush in one hand, toothpaste in another, as if I was just a trivial thought that one would have before brushing teeth.

“Sorry about what happened at the gun range, Lassie. I didn’t mean to. I’m not very experienced in this department. I thought—Never mind. I’m sorry. Are we good?”

“We’re good,” I said.

How could we be good? You thought what? You thought I liked you? You thought a grown man wouldn’t have reacted that way when touched by you? You thought you were just being friendly? Or you thought I was numb from the neck down? How could we be good when you had destroyed all my morals and let the world crash down on me? Screw you.

I didn’t get much sleep that night, the lingering feelings of his fingers on my hip haunting me wherever my mind ended up. My hand found its way under my boxer briefs. After several strokes, I stopped myself, pulled my hand away, and buried my head in one of the cushions. Better to suffocate than endure any more of this.

* * *

My day off rolled around finally. I had been looking forward to today for the whole week. I could recuperate by myself because Shawn planned to hang out with Gus. Why Gus all the time? He didn’t have other friends? Did Shawn mention me when he talked to Gus? What would the two be doing in Gus’s bedroom alone? What did they think of me as behind my back? His friend? His father’s friend? His manny? The asinine homo?

When I searched for a better word while showering at 4 a.m., the bathroom door opened. I turned off the water immediately and kept still behind the curtain. I heard Shawn yawning loudly.

“Sorry,” he slurred. “I can’t hold it anymore.”

He peed, flushed, washed his hands then left, turning off the light out of habit, his foggy head forgetting I was still in here.

Seconds later, he returned. I stilled again, my breath shallower and quieter. I didn’t understand why I would do that. Was I afraid he would peek behind the curtain if I made a sound?

“Lassie, it’s fricking four in the morning,” he whispered.

“I’m going fishing.”

When I didn’t hear a reply, I thought he had left.

“Can I go with you?” he asked.

I hesitated. Nothing good would happen with only him and me offshore, out of the eyesight of every other human being. But no one was watching us now either. What would be different on the sea than on the land? We would have less stability, but no less law.

“All right,” I answered. I had officially gone insane.

He took his time with his shower. I suspected he fell asleep on the cold tiles and had an urge to check. When he was ready to leave, he was wearing a blue sweater with a round neck, a black puffer jacket. He even had a brown knitted hat on which had a pineapple sewed on the front, with two hairy balls dangling at the two sides of his head, and not to mention the matching brown scarf and those matching brown mittens.

“We live in Santa Barbara,” I said. “Not Canada.” I was only wearing a T-shirt and old jeans.

“It’s still dark outside and the sea wind is brutal. I’ll be the one who laughs at the end. You’ll see.”

After I had sailed the rented boat, Shawn never took his hands out of the pockets, only sitting next to me, shuddering his teeth.

“Are you really this cold?” I asked, pitying him slightly, considering whether to change his name to Little Princess.

“I have bad circulations in my limbs.”

“Only in your limbs? ’Cause it seems like—” Before I could finish, he pulled out his right hand, bit the mitten off, and laid his hand on mine. It _was_ cold. But to me, it felt like iced lemon tea in the summertime, a solemn marble statue in front of a museum. It was more calming than the sea even if it was a surge in a storm.

“God!” Shawn exclaimed, the mitten between his teeth. “You’re a fireball!” Suddenly, he snatched his hand away. “Sorry, I forgot,” he apologized, obviously referring to the last incident where he touched me and I blew up.

“It’s okay,” I said, trying to sound nonchalant. “If you’re this afraid of the cold, why did you open the car window the night I picked you up from your dad’s place?”

“You know why.” 

“No, I don’t.”

He rolled his eyes. “To piss you off. What other reason was there?”

“Why?”

“I didn’t like you at first. You were like the human version of a boarding school.”

“So you like me now?” I asked before losing my courage.

He gazed into my eyes but shifted to the sea quickly. Shrugging, he said, “I like you just fine. I was told I should count it as a win when the foster brother doesn’t steal my money or hit me.”

That answer was equivalent to silence. I had already known he didn’t mind me. He hadn’t given me any attitude or thrown any tantrums. He was a nice company, so he couldn’t have hated me.

The problem was I couldn’t be sure whether that _like_ had the possibility of going over the edge of a friendship and falling down the canyon of a romance, even when he snuck behind me and put his hands under my pits.

I hissed as the coldness and tickling sensation passed through me like a bolt. My breath halted.

“Don’t move. You said it’s okay,” he said.

I complied.

“Close your arms. It’ll be warmer,” he ordered. “For me,” he added.

I stopped the engine of the boat. I would have driven further out but with Shawn’s hands on me, I was blind and deaf. He occupied every last bit of my senses. His fingers were so close to my chest. I begged my heart to slow down lest it gave away my secret. My lips were tightened, my throat locked, because with every inch his hands moved, I could have whimpered and moaned.

Then his cheek was on my back as well. During those five minutes, it was just me and him, swaying on the water, nature as our witness, me counting the seconds he stayed this close because I had a crazy thought that none of this would be real on land. I wanted to bawl my eyes out right then and there and ask him why he was doing this to me. My inside twisted and turned.

“Shawn…” I said quietly. I was about to give in to my desire and confess and hope he would reciprocate my feeling.

“All better!” He pulled his hands away and presented them before my face. The nails weren’t purple anymore. “This won’t last very long. We better start fishing for some innocent fish. Get wild in the wild! Woo! But we will set them free after we’ve caught them, right? Don’t tell me you plan to gut them.”

It was my heart that had been wrenched out of me. It was me who had been gutted.

He stood up and fetched the fishing poles and the bag of gears for me.

We sat side by side at the bow. Staring at where my fishing line went into the water and made ripples around it, a hot fog blocked my view. I didn’t think I had felt this cheated my whole life. I felt so wronged by the sneaky little fox next to me that I was on the verge of pressing his head into the freezing water and tell him not to toy with my feelings. I was exhausted with this game, which I was sure was going to cost me my life. _I have better things to do, Shawn. So give me a goddamn answer!_

Rage made me impulsive. I turned my head around, not caring he saw my tears. In fact, it was my sole intention.

But he had nodded off, fishing pole pressed between his elbow and thigh. He would startle himself and sober up when his head tilted too much, then he would nod off again, like a sleep-deprived student in a lecture hall listening to the boring professor yammering on about physics. His newly cut brown hair had turned golden as if it had absorbed all the sunlight before the sun even appeared above the horizon.

Where was his pineapple hat? I looked around. But within those seconds when I didn’t have my eyes on him, he dozed off and plunged into the water headfirst. The boat rocked violently under me.

I was frozen in the spot. The boy had died and I was left alone—That was my first thought.

All of a sudden, two hands grabbed the edge of the boat, then a head surfaced from under the water. “I’m okay! I’m okay!” he shouted, his upper body not even yet on the boat.

I put my arms under his and hauled him up. Lying on his back, he was soaked from head to toe and shivering like a blender. Water gradually pooled around him. His face was pale, lips purple. 

“Take your clothes off. You’re gonna catch a cold like this.”

I stalked off to where the bag was and grabbed the blanket. When I got back, he was only rid of his puffer jacket, his scarf, and mittens. He sat against the side of the boat, the wet sweater still weighing on him.

I tossed the blanket beside his feet. Gripping the hem of his sweater, I started pulling up. His hands pushed mine away.

“I’ll be fine,” he mumbled.

I didn’t catch the hidden or rather obvious meaning at that moment, so I insisted like a good Samaritan would, “You won’t get warm unless you take these off.”

This time, I went for his sweatpants.

Shawn grabbed both of my wrists and yanked them up. “I’ll be fine,” he repeated, louder than the last time. Only then did I realize what it looked like I was doing to an outsider’s eyes…to his eyes.

I backed away instantly like a mouse on a railroad spooked by the oncoming train that vowed to crush it. I drove us back to land without exchanging another word between us.


	3. Chapter 3

Back at my apartment, Shawn took another hot shower while I flipped through channels sitting on my couch. I couldn’t be more hurt. The jury was still out but I knew exactly what they were going to say: This man has borne evil feelings toward the boy, so he must have evil intentions all the time about the boy, therefore he was going to do the evil deed to the boy.

But, Judge! I just feared he was going to catch a cold! I didn’t want to do anything to him! At least not at that time…No judge would listen to me. No. Because none was stupid.

“What ya thinking here, Lassie?”

I flinched at the light kick at my shin. Shawn was standing next to me, his hair half-dried, a bath towel thrown over his shoulder like a cape. He was only wearing his gray briefs. I willed my eyes to stay on his face.

“Mind if I sit down?” he asked.

I gestured to him to go ahead, even though I minded very much. Had I not turned the radiator on as soon as I got back, he wouldn’t have walked around half-naked in my home. Who else to blame except me to have my feelings toyed?

He plopped down and draped the towel around this waist.

“You all warmed up?” I asked although it was obvious.

“Yes,” he replied. “Thanks for the help.” He didn’t sound sarcastic.

“You’re welcome.”

After a beat, wringing his hands, he said without lifting his head, “It wasn’t you.”

I looked away from the TV and ventured a glance at him. “Mm?”

“It was me,” he added. “I was embarrassed, you know. I had just dropped into the freezing water…I wasn’t sure my skin wouldn’t look all puffy or shrunk or like the Lockless Monster.” His voice trailed off.

“You mean the Loch Ness Monster?”

He cocked his head up, squinted his eyes at me. “That just doesn’t make any sense. It’s Lockless—because it’s not locked under the water.”

“Actually, there’s a lake in Scotland—”

“I’m pretty sure I’ve heard it both ways,” he interjected.

Fine, I didn’t intend to tell folklore that would end with me disclosing I’m not Scottish but Irish and bringing up the fact my father had passed away when I was in elementary school at the end. So…fine, no big deal.

“Nessie didn’t want Lassie to look when he was messy but he’s no wussy.”

“Huh?” _What do you mean_ huh _?! You heard him!_

He knew I knew the exact moment he was referring to since he sat down and started playing the it’s-not-you-it’s-me game. I was grateful he found the necessity to speak to me about this, otherwise I would have been buried alive by the misery lying in the grave I dug for myself. But it was also as clear as day the blatant nudity was only him trying to make a point by showing me he saw me as harmless, probably even trusted me. I waited for him to say more.

“I never—” He was trying to find the right words. It always amazed me whenever he was lost for words, for I thought he was only made by streams of words, eighty percent of which were lines from movies and TV shows I hadn’t even heard of.

I held my breath, afraid even an exhale would interrupt him and cut off his bravado which I certainly didn’t have. I had some thought already what he was going to say though—I never had a relationship before. I never had sex before. I never liked a guy before. I never liked someone who doesn’t watch cartoons before. Either way, I would be way more than okay.

“I never want to go fishing ever again,” he finished, his laughs strained. He held back. There was no way this took him so long to squeeze out. I was disappointed again. I didn’t know how much more disappointment I could take.

He asked if I wanted to watch a movie with him before he went to the Guster’s. Only the living room had a radiator, he excused.

I had long forgotten which movie he picked that day. My whole attention was on him even though my gaze wasn’t. He dozed off half an hour in the movie (how much sleep did this one need?), which gave me a chance to really let my eyes roam around him since the first day without any inhibition. I had never allowed myself to stare at any part of him too long lest I would confirm my suspicion that I found him—alluring. Since I couldn’t deny it anymore, why not?

I scooted closer, winced as the leather surface under my butt sounded the security alarm.

His skin looked smooth. How would it feel? Where did he get that scar on his breastbone? Would he share that story with me one day? His nose was like sculptured but lacked a final soft touch. Would it poke me when I kiss him? He wasn’t muscular like those jocks in highschools but wasn’t as skinny as me either when I was his age. He had more stubbles than the first day I met him. I wasn’t even sure I could call it stubbles. They were just sprigs of facial hair here and there. Did he stop shaving and grow them out just for me? Like he had cut his hair because he thought I didn’t like it. Did he do all that to look older? Like I had been spending more time before the mirror to make myself look younger, albeit I was young.

_Shawn, can you hear me? Please don’t say you do because I have no idea what I’m able to tell you if you’re actually here. I’ve never liked people like you. Youth. I despised it. When I was 17, I never cared for my peers. They held no interest to me whatsoever. Men and women, I’ve loved them all, but only when they’re older than me, stronger than me, whom I have so much to learn from. I don’t know I’ve changed until I met you. For god’s sake, what do you have to offer?! Do I want to be with you or do I just want to be you again?_

_I want to protect you but at the same time invade you. I want to make your body mine, make you mine. I came, I saw, but when would I ever conquer? And I know I’ve been longing for more._

I leaned in, my burning lips inches away from his full cheek. It radiated coolness. He smelled like—me. He used my moisturizer cream. I could only inhale. If I breathed out, he would feel my existence. What then?

It turned out I was suicidal—I blew out a hot breath slowly.

Like I had imagined, he was spooked. He leaned sideways and stared at me wide-eyed. He gripped his blanket, _my_ blanket, opening and closing his mouth like a fish.

…

I raise my forefinger in front of his mouth and press down. “Shh,” I whisper. His lips are supple and redder where I touch.

I lay my hand on his lap, hairs grazing my palm. When my fingers trail upward, he grabs my arm. “It’s okay,” I comfort. “It’s okay.” I continue on my track.

I feel his waistband. I lift my head and see he bats his eyes at me. “Please,” he mouths. What does that even mean? But please say it again.

I pull his briefs down to his ankles. I kiss his neck. Shuddering sounds come out of his throat.

“Shh,” I say again.

“Shawn,” I call into his ears as he whimpers, a brisk breath slips out of him.

I reach down and feel the couch already damp and sticky. He blushes. I want to ask him if anyone has ever done this to him before.

His hands cupped my neck as I licked his jawline as my finger found its way inside him.

He yelps, trying to wiggle his body away.

“Shh.” I brush his hair with my other hand. I would never hurt my Little Prince.

“Take it slow,” he asks me.

I assume it means _take me slow_. I am happy to comply.

…

If only all this had been true. If only I had had the guts to take him, to be inside of him and explore where possibly none had ever set foot in.

I cowered. When Shawn was startled awake, I reached out and caressed his cheek where my hot breath trickled out and tickled in the hope he would lean in and touch me back. His face was springy, which I couldn’t get enough of and wanted to knead like a mound of dough. _Touch any part me and I shall make you my king, Little Prince._

He turned his head away, using his shoulder and back as a shield. There was only air left at my fingertip.

“Hey, look at me,” I said, I begged, palming his jaw trying to make him face me when he resisted, the muscle on his neck tensing. _Look at me, Shawn, and love me, because I love you. Isn’t this reason enough? Don’t leave me a shambles of a man._

“I better get going,” he said, staring at the floor. “Gus gets cranky every time I have him wait for me. I’ll just take a bus. Feel free to finish the movie without me. I’ve seen it ten times before. What am I thinking? You must’ve seen it too. It’s from your collection. Anyway…” He was out of the couch and my apartment in no time, not even saying goodbye. What a prick.

That wasn’t the first time I had resented him, for playing hard-to-get, and it wouldn’t be the last. I was conscious of the fact I sounded like every other egocentric predator out there, fabricating and fantasizing being desired, not recognizing rejection when it’s spelled out right under their nose.

I was stuck in the middle of nowhere and I had lost communication with human society. A dilemma, one might say. I used to think that was for people with weak hearts and weaker minds. Now, I was one of them. It turned out I didn’t know any better.

I couldn’t let Shawn go but in the meantime, I couldn’t lock him in my tower and force him to admit which was likely untrue. For starters, I didn’t have a tower. I didn’t even have an attic or a basement. I was just a pirate whose original intention had been to take over the throne when the king in the nearby kingdom was out of the picture, who got side-tracked by lusting over the beauty of his young prince.

I would never watch a movie the right way again.

Later that day, I received a call from Gus, _informing_ me Shawn would stay overnight at his house. I asked him to put Shawn on the line. He said he was in the bathroom and would have him call me back. He didn’t.

I slept on my bed that night, Shawn’s bed. I wept. The pillow was stained with my tears and snorts, for the loss of someone who had never been mine.

I threw his teddy bear against the wall over and over, catching it every time it bounced back from the wall, smudging it with sweat on my palms, punched its belly till it was thinner, and kissed it a good night.

* * *

He didn’t mention my indiscretion afterward and pretended everything was normal. Like before, he tagged along to my work, bombarded me with incessant talking, kept me company. Good days never last. I tried my best to store the mumbo jumbo in my memory so when one day I am too old to move, I could reminisce about the boy I once loved in my wheelchair, who never loved me back.

One day, I stopped by the grocery store to buy a battery after getting off work. I left Shawn in the car by himself. When I got back, a homeless man with greasy matted hair in dirty ragged clothes and was bending over and talking to Shawn in the passenger seat, his dirty fingers smearing my car door.

I yanked the stranger back and shooed him away, giving him a scornful look.

“Why are you talking to that guy?” I asked, getting into the driver’s seat.

“That’s Jimmy,” he said as if that explained everything.

“Jimmy?”

“I met him once outside a bookstore, so I thought I might say hi.” He said it like he was merely chatting up an old friend.

“Aren’t you afraid?”

“Of what? Lice? I had it once so I won’t catch it again.”

I ignored the fact of how misinformed he was regarding the health issue because there was something more important on the plate.

“You’re a cop’s son,” I pointed out curtly, hoping it would jog his undeveloped mind.

“So?”

“Your dad never taught you that you shouldn’t talk to a stranger? Especially a stranger dressed like him?”

“I just told you that’s Jimmy,” he said, pointing outside of the window with his thumb. Jimmy was now sitting on the curb and looking at me with shifting eyes. “He’s not a stranger. Besides, that rule doesn’t apply to me anymore. Maybe you haven’t noticed—I don’t really _need_ a babysitter. A chauffeur, maybe. A car, most indefinitely. I don’t have your lamp post genes but I’m almost as tall as my dad, and this is probably _it_ for me.”

“You’ve still got time,” I interjected, making my tone encouraging.

“The point is I’m not a kid. I’m tall. You’re just taller. Get over it.”

At that moment, I didn’t truly grasp the meaning of his words, because I was so insistent on finishing my argument. To me, that sounded exactly like what every irresponsible kid wants—to be seen as a grown-up while they bite more than they can chew. “What if he’s a sex offender or a human-trafficker? What if he drags you into an alley and makes you blow him and then sells you to New York to prostitute?”

“FYI, I’d love to visit the Big Apple someday.” Tilting his head and raising his eyebrows, he looked at me sideways, then snickered. “You sure have some imaginations.” I felt a pang in my heart. Did he think I was the pot calling the kettle black? Then why was he still here?

“What?!”

“Nothing.”

Again with the _nothing_. He probably derived fun out of having me guess. How on earth did I fall for someone as cruel as him, I didn’t know.

“Just drive,” he said, pressing the horn button.

When I stepped on the gas, he spoke again, “You know, Jimmy and I have a lot in common.”

“Oh? What’s that?”

“We’re both homeless.”

The car lurched to a stop. I rolled my eyes at him then opened the window on my side. Poking my head out, I yelled, “Hey, Jimmy! Come here for a sec, would you?”

Jimmy jogged toward us, but he chose to stay on Shawn’s side. He might have been a little afraid of me, I thought. Shawn rolled down his window.

Reaching into my pocket, I retrieved my wallet and took out a $20 bill. With the bill between my fingers, I extended my arm. Jimmy took it without a second to lose. “Buy yourself some food. Or clothes. Or whatever you need. But don’t do drugs. Got it?”

He nodded enthusiastically. Throwing something onto Shawn’s laps, he bid us goodbye.

“Sweet!” Shawn exclaimed.

“What is it?” I asked, leaning over to check.

“Sweets.” Shawn palmed the wrapped candies to let me see.

“Don’t you dare eat that. I have to return you to your father alive,” I warned.

But it was too late. He had popped one strawberry-flavored open and threw it into his mouth. He moaned in content, which made me want to dive in and taste his tongue, regardless of whether there was roofie in there. Better knock both of us out.

What had I gotten myself into?

If I had to be candid—no one was that good-hearted, not to my knowledge. I gave Jimmy money with only one purpose on my mind and that was to show the other person in my car that I could be categorized under the heading “nice,” to let him know I cared about the things and people he cared about. Had he told me his only goal was to preserve the fossil fuel a thousand feet under the sea, I would have made that my lifelong purpose and marched with a banner: Green is life.

I glanced at Shawn on our drive home and caught him smiling at me, seemingly pondering over the new side of me he just saw.

I straightened my back and smiled back. It does feel nice to be nice sometimes. I wondered where Jimmy would be staying during this particular cold night.

* * *

“Notice anything different?” Shawn asked, gesturing himself in the doorway. He just got back from a night out with Gus. Where, I didn’t know and ask. I couldn’t risk him comparing me with his overbearing father covertly.

I scanned him up and down but didn’t find anything out of the ordinary.

“Look closer,” he said, beckoning me with a wave of a hand.

I took a step forward. Then I saw it, glistening under the light from the kitchen were two silver ear studs stabbing through his earlobes. I gasped loudly and retreated, wishing I was blind.

“You got your ear pierced?!” What would I say to his dad? Your son lost two pieces of meat under my watch? “What the hell, Shawn?!” My voice was too high-pitched but I couldn’t bring myself to care.

“Relax. I got them pierced two years ago, which was mom-sanctioned, by the way. She would take every opportunity to rile my dad up by that time so it was quite easy to get approval. I just bought this gorgeous pair,” he said, beaming, wiggling his eyebrows. “What do you think?”

I twitched my face awkwardly. _Smile. Say nothing._ Silence would do me no wrong.

“You hate it,” he said it for me, good mood melting.

“No. No. No.” I shook my hands in front of me hastily, trying to salvage the damage I had done. “They are—sensational.” –as in they could destroy all my senses.

“Oh, please,” Shawn snorted, rubbing his right earlobe. “I went through all this trouble dragging Gus to the other end of the town. The least you could do is offer me some honesty.”

 _You’re one to talk._ I was considering my next step when I realized he wasn’t just rubbing his earlobe. He was taking those ear studs down.

I launched myself at him and grabbed his hands. “No. No. Leave it. They’re good. You look good.”

“You don’t have to lie,” he said, eyes shifting on my face. “Or you should learn to lie better.”

“I’m not lying,” I insisted. “Want me to prove it?”

To this day, I still couldn’t understand what had possessed me that was able to make me do this. I blamed the bottle of whiskey standing on the counter, though I hadn’t a drop of alcohol that day. I was inebriated nonetheless.

His two hands locked in mine, I tilted my head down and kissed his right ear, then the other one. He didn’t dodge away from the contact. It was the fourth of July inside my heart.

What I would never be able to forget was the way he blushed that night. As I lifted my head back up, I witnessed the red creeping up his cheeks and ears tinge by tinge, heat radiating from every pore. My face must have echoed his because I was floating in outer space, drifting like Neil Armstrong after he had taken the first step on the moon. Gravity was nothing to me for I was no mere mortal.

Shawn closed his eyes and tilted his head up, taking this a step further. Under the warm light and tranquil air, he looked incredibly peaceful and…young. Like in every old tale, I made a reckless decision.

I let go of his hands and pointed at a paper bag on the floor. “What’s that?” I asked, the actual content not interesting me at all.

His head dropped for a second. But when he looked at me again, it didn’t give away the fact we had both been testing the water seconds ago.

He bent down and picked up the bag. There was a beige turtle neck inside. “I bought it for you,” he said, holding it against my chest and extended the sleeves to see if the lengths fit.

“I never wear a turtle neck,” I said honestly.

“You will now,” he patted my shoulder then headed to the bedroom, taking the clothes with him. I heard him opening the wardrobe. The hangers clinked against each other, welcoming the new member to join the rest of the deserted club.

I could almost hear them whispering together: tsk, tsk, tsk, what a fine opportunity went to waste. How complicated was that? The boy wants a kiss, you give him a kiss. End of discussion. He thinks he’s a hotshot like our Little Prince. So naïve. You’re not in the same league so you’re not in the position to play the game, mister.

I merely got cold feet, I tried to clarify. Not a single shirt of mine would listen. My underpants giggled, being the ones knowing my innermost and my dirtiest secret.

“Night,” I said toward the half-shut door. He must haven’t heard me because he didn’t say it back. I didn’t mind as much. The light at the end of the tunnel had mercifully shined on my face, blinding me like Shawn’s ugly pair of silver ear studs. Was life really that hard? I asked. Not with Little Prince’s burning red ears.

* * *

My partner called in sick the other day. Because it was still the holiday season, the station lacked manpower. I was asked by my sergeant to patrol our usual neighborhoods alone for an afternoon until they moved some personnel around on the schedule and assigned me a temporary new partner.

“I could be your partner,” Shawn said with utmost enthusiasm once I had shared the news. I thought Spencer might be a little off about his son's willingness to become a cop. “I call shotgun!”

I hadn’t intended to broach the protocol to another degree by bringing a civilian to ride along with me when I had no backup whatsoever and disregard Spencer’s clear wish regarding Shawn’s safety. But I toyed with the idea because nothing bad had happened in two weeks. The most dangerous thing Shawn came close to was when his face almost got scratched by an old lay’s cat when he volunteered to climb a tree and bring it down for her. One less task for me. It was frivolous enough, but it came to my mind often how he petted that cat with all the tenderness one could ever find in a boy. Did I yearn to be petted like that? Now would that be so bad?

And there was no point in turning back now since Shawn was already in my police car, unable to keep his hands off the radio and I had already driven three blocks.

After an unremarkable afternoon, my shift was about to end. I glanced at my watch. Only five minutes left to go. Suddenly, the radio blared. Shawn jumped on his seat and swore. I shot him a glare.

“What did you do?” I asked.

“Nothing!” He raised his hands to demonstrate his innocence.

Then came a female voice which I recognized from the dispatch center. “All units be advised. Robbery suspect last seen fleeing west on Florence street on foot. Six foot Caucasian male in black hoodie and camouflage khaki. Possibly armed with a knife.”

Shawn turned to me so fast I heard his spine crack. “We’re on Florence Street! Yes!” He slapped my horn button several times. “Watch out bad guy! We’re coming for you!”

“Copy,” he said into the radio in a low voice. “This is Officer Lassiter and his equally, if not more, competent friend. We have eyes on the suspect and ready to take him down.”

My mind was wiped blank. Never had I been that embarrassed in my whole career. I looked around in my car and found no hole I could climb in. I smacked the back of his head in blinding fury.

“Sorry,” he mouthed, giving me an apologetic look. Grabbing the radio again, he added loudly as to for me to hear, “Over.” He thought that was what peeved me.

“We do not have eyes on the suspect!” I seethed.

“Yes, we do.” He smiled confidently, pointing at a man matching the description who was walking quickly past a flower shop behind us.

“You stay here. Lock the car,” I ordered, ready to jump out onto the street.

Shawn gripped my uniform. “No way I’m missing out on this.” Taking the spare handcuffs and gun in the glove box, he stumbled out of the car before me.

“Hey, bad guy!” He shouted as he raced to the man, every passerby’s eyes trained on them, and several me. “Freeze!”

My legs were numb then, out of Shawn’s pure stupidity and my crippling fear. An icy feeling tumbled inside me as I chased Shawn who chased the armed suspect. I was starting to outline a eulogy for the boy. All I could come up with was: he dumb, he dumb, he dumb.

The two of them rounded a corner and went into an empty alley. I lost sight of either of them, not even hurried footsteps signaling me which direction they headed. My heart dropped to my stomach and eroded by the strong acid in seconds.

“Shawn!” I shouted. Funny how when you’re panicking, your brain could be downsized into such a small vocabulary—Shawn, oh my god, fuck, fuck, and fuck. I have come a long way since then, and I would no longer be fazed by situations like this. But inexperienced as I was, had this been my real partner Lenny rather than Little Prince, I had no doubt I could have reacted calmer. Then again, Lenny wasn’t dumb.

“Shawn!” I shouted again, my voice trembling and muffled like from under the sea. “Shawn…”

A heavy metal door on the other end was shoved open. Shawn came running out, his hair ruffled, sweater stretched, one shoelace on his sneakers untied. My relief poured down like the Niagara Fall. My arms extended on their own accord, expecting him to run into my embrace.

But the desperate look on his face sounded the alarm and awoke my dreary logic. Peering over Shawn, I saw our suspect chasing him in full speed, a gun in his hand this time rather than a knife, which I recognized as mine in an instant. _Yeah, teach me how to shoot, you nimrod. You can’t even hold on to your gun!_

The gun was raised, its barrel pointing at Shawn’s back, smack dab on a track which the bullet could penetrate through both of our hearts—not that it could have been possible physically, but I would like to think we had both been shot by Cupid’s arrow at that fleeting moment, considering what happened later that night. How poetic it would be if we die on this cool evening together. I hoped no one would take our pants off before we were sent to the morgue.

“Duck!” I barked.

With outstretched arms, Shawn dropped to the ground. If only he had been this obedient when I had told him to stay in the car. I fired my first shot during fieldwork since my career had started. The suspect fell a second later, agonizing over his crushed knee bone.

“Great teamwork, eh,” Shawn said, straining his neck to catch my expression, overly sweet.

It turned out when they had rounded the corner, Shawn followed the suspect into a nightclub through a side door in the alley, which was a front for the base of an armed robbery gang, where Shawn claimed he was “roughed up a little” but eventually “outwitted them by throwing popcorns on those thugs face.”

Back in the SBPD, I was chewed out by my sergeant for three hours non-stop. Then came the saliva rain of the chief himself who personally came to the station because the minor I had just endangered was a certain head detective’s son. After that, I felt lucky all I got was a two-week suspension.

Shawn wasn’t off the hook either. Under the glare of the chief who hovered over him like a hulk, he had to listen to his father yelling at him over the phone states away. Spencer’s voice was loud and clear even outside of the office. But I could tell, Little Prince had fazed out long ago, staring at nowhere, only humming agreement occasionally.

Long story short—Henry Spencer would be coming back this weekend, a week earlier than he had planned.

“Who goes to Florida voluntarily?!” Shawn complained and kicked a bush outside of the station. The vulnerable twigs swished a whine, caving at the foot of Little Prince.

His shoelace was still loose, so I squatted and started tying it for him, not realizing how foolish this scene was to passerby.

Obviously, he didn’t either. He continued to protest about his on-coming fate, “Crazy men go to crazy states. No. I will not let that man control my life anymore. Who says I have to follow him to the other side of the country just because he decided to do it on a whim?! This is it! We’re done! I’m perfectly able to make a living on my own. I will not live in that old man’s house for another second, here or Florida.”

He asked me whether I would let his father kidnap him away against his will and whether I minded a roommate for another few months. I didn’t answer him. It was hard enough for me to fantasize about eloping. He shouldn’t have tempted me with a real chance.

“You’re the son he always wants,” he told me, “so why don’t you hand in an application? I’ll make sure he peruse it. I’ll even put in a few good words for you. No. Actually, you’d be better off without me saying anything since he doesn’t trust me, and my opinion’s shit.”

When we arrived home, it was almost midnight. We were both exhausted over the earlier fiasco.

Lying on the couch in the comfort of my pajamas, I watched as the hand of the clock strike closer and closer to 12. We could live in the woods live cavemen, my brain said out of nowhere. _We’ll hunt together and carpenter together. I’ll roast a lamb and he’ll make smores._ Lovely life.

“Lassie,” Shawn called out quietly, standing under the doorframe of the bedroom in the dark, wearing a gray cotton shirt and blue striped pajama pants. “Are you asleep?”

“No,” I answered, propping myself up on elbows. “Is everything okay?”

“Totally. It’s just—do you mind staying in here tonight?” He pointed at the bedroom. “Just for tonight. I promise I don’t snore. Plus a night on the bed would do good to your back, right? You take the bed. I’ll take the floor.”

When I walked past him, a pillow and blanket under my arm, he was still rambling excuses. “So the nightclub freaked you out,” I concluded it for him, helping him out, but I knew it couldn’t have been true. No matter how afraid he had been in there, as long as he saw the light of the day this would become the epic yarn he told to his schoolmates after the winter vacation ended, an overdramatic version in which he was the hero instead of me.

But I did retain a glimpse of hope he was freaked out.

“They have zero percent sense of humor and zero percent body fat.”

“Yikes,” I said.

“Yikes,” he repeated. “But I gotta admit—nice view though.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got so embarrassed editing this last chapter I covered my eyes with my hand during the whole ordeal.

Both getting under our covers, him on the floor, me on the bed, we returned to our separate dreamlands. Although for me, my dreamland was a well-oiled machine called fantasy, a hungry yearning fed by my unquenchable libido.

Lying on my side, I stared at the back of his head as my heart sprinted, leaping over hurdles and hurdles, unable to calm myself down.

He turned around, sleep escaping him as well, saw me staring, and gave me a faint smile before closing his eyelids again.

I closed mine as he did, pretending this moment didn’t deserve my full-on attention. I had no idea how much time had passed, only the clock was ticking away without mercy, reminding and warning me to _carpe diem_ and the fearful trip was not done.

I’m not a guy who lives in the moment. Future. Future is where I reside. Let today’s fun be a bygone so I could rule my future my way. But there are always moments like this too gripping and gut-wrenching for me to let it slide and have me go “Screw the future. Today is the day I rule.” The woods were simply too dark, deep, and sweet. Regardless of the miles I had to go, I couldn’t stop myself from poking my head inside and seeing where it could take me. I was weak—that was why. I am human—that was why.

Behind my closed eyelids, I had full visuals of the room. Every single detail was familiar to me like the back of my hand. I had eyes under the bed, behind the curtains, on the ceiling—not even a hair would sway with the wind without me wrenching its arms behind its back while gloating—aha, gotcha!

The bed dipped on the side I was facing. My blanket was lifted gently and put down again. I remained as still as possible as the little creature snuggled up to me, throwing his leg over my leg, inserting his arm under my arm.

His face was against my chest. All I could see was his rambunctious hair on the top of his head sticking out under the blanket. He didn’t say anything. So I didn’t say anything. He clung to me like he had clung to his bear. I tried not to picture him as that cat Garfield with his melting body like a puddle, to provide me, his owner, the temperature of immense comfort. His belly suddenly seemed very scratchable.

The difference was, he didn’t belong to me, not a finger or a toe. Reality pales when compared with my primal lust. The fact it felt wrong was exactly what made it feel right. Was it the same case for him? Was I just a phase because everyone would tell him this was wrong? Was I the middle finger he would like to give to his father but hadn’t dared to?

I abandoned reality when he purred under my cover. This boy, or Little Prince, or Shawn Spencer, whatever I called him, from his flat chest scar to the ball of his heel, was mine, all mine. Mine, mine, and mine.

My arm rounded his back and pulled him against me. I heard him inhale sharply as he squirmed to find a better position. In my humble opinion though, there was no better position than under me. I kissed the top of his head. Pulling the blanket over my head, blocking the pale moonlight that was creeping inside through the windows, I straddled his waist.

He panted heavily as he felt for the buttons of my top in darkness. Though I couldn’t see him, I could feel his hands trembled in haste, or perhaps anticipation. I gave him time. We had all the time in the world because the world felt like mine at that point.

“Lassie,” he whispered into the stuffy air around us as I was taking off his pants.

“Yes?”

The sound of his hair rustling against the sheet was his answer. He must have realized I couldn’t see him, so he added seconds later, “Nothing.”

I sprawled over him, this time, only a shin of sweat between our skins. Burying my head next to his, I nibbled a spot on the side of his neck where it bridged his back and shoulder.

His belly rippled underneath mine. His hands instantly grabbed my upper arms, nails digging into them. I marveled at the effect that this single action caused. I had to do it again. Now, his breath hitched as he strained to keep his head still, his legs kicking on the sheet.

I chuckled. “You can make sounds,” I told him, my lips lapping against his ears. “No one can hear us. No one can hear _you_.”

He let out a held-in breath as his jaw bumped against my shoulder which I took as an understanding. As my mouth came into contact with that spot again, he shivered, his breath shivered, his nails scratched my back, but he was still silent, much to my dismay. That was okay. I could amend that soon.

“Kiss me,” he said, turning his head to its side to face me.

I pressed his lower lip down with my thumb. “Kiss you?” I asked as if that was an offensive request.

He nodded slightly, taking my thumb with his head up and down.

“Where?”

His lip tightened, thinned, his teeth probing my fingertip. I smiled back. Propping up with my elbows on each of his sides, I loitered above him before finally lowering my head, licking his lips. He opened his mouth, waited for mine to close around his. Seeing that I didn’t grant his wish immediately, he lifted his head to hunt for the kiss on his own.

I backed my head away, just out of his reach. He lifted his head again and higher. I backed away again and further. I was dangling my mouth as a bait, him a ravenous gambler fish too adventurous for his own sake. He groaned. I laughed at his frustration.

“What’s so funny about that?” His voice was tinged with a trifle of hurt and alarm. I shouldn’t have discouraged his spirit.

“Nothing,” I mimicked him. Tangling my fingers in his hair, I leaned down to kiss him where he wanted. It boosted my confidence that he was as bad of a kisser as me, sloppier even. At one point, he nearly bit off my tongue. He didn’t seem to realize that, keeping on kissing me in haste like he had in the beginning. I couldn’t break away either. Little Prince’s imperfection made him perfect, his inexperience a gift without any flamboyant wrapper. He was my favorite Christmas gift I had received in my entire life.

When my fingers closed around his cock, brushed its tip that was already wet like a leaking faucet, he gasped, jerking his head back.

I dismounted him and laid on my side beside him but not moving my hand away. I pulled down the blanket, enough for me to see his face. “You like this?” I asked brazenly and gave him a ghostly stroke.

I had never talked this much during sex. Days or nights, flirtation had always eluded me—a meaningless conversation that would drive me up the wall or cast me into a burning hell with the uncertainty of its nature. But as Shawn looked at me, his eyes foggy, opening and closing his mouth unable to express through his words, I couldn’t resist pestering him. I relished being the torturer rather than the torturee. Now the torment became a dance for me. “I can hold it like that for as long as I want,” I said. “I’m in no particular hurry. I don’t have to get up early for work thanks to you. You want me to start moving? Tell me you like it.”

He licked his lips and let out a chunk of air. “Like it,” he said under his breath.

“I can’t hear it,” I said, bringing my ear to his mouth, my hand squeezing him.

My ear felt his smile. “Fuck you,” he whispered.

“Really?”

“Really.”

Swiftly, I crawled back under the blanket again. When my mouth took him in, he bent his knees, locked my head between his legs. He was muttering nonsense above me, his hands in my hair, sometimes pushing me down, sometimes doing nothing, not making up his mind.

Before long, as my throat swallowed around him, he came in my mouth, his moaning trailing away.

“Sorry. Sorry…” he said breathily, ruffling my hair.

I didn’t know what he was apologizing for. For finishing too quickly or for dumping himself into me. Either way, he didn’t have to. I liked him even more because of it.

I resurfaced to the shore.

“Lassie,” he said, “your mouth should be locked into a museum.”

“But you won’t be able to use it then.”

“If I can’t use it, I don’t want anyone to use it.”

“Selfish. You know, you could just pee around me.”

He chuckled. Then his smile faded slightly as a touch of red crept up his already pink face. “Look, this is not my…normal speed, if you dig my gist. At least not when I’m on my own.”

“What about when with others?” I hoped I was subtle enough.

“Well…there aren’t many to compare to.”

“How many?” Subtlety decided to drop me.

He picked up the pillow above him and smashed it against my face. I got my answer. “I’m not great with math,” he said. Throwing the blanket over his head decidedly with a jerk of his arm, he hid his face from me, mortified.

Before I could laugh at his unnecessary embarrassment, he headed south to repeat my earlier action on me.

“Shawn,” I palmed his face and pulled him up. With him kneeling between my legs, I said, “I have a better idea.”

“I won’t bite you.”

“There’s not enough evidence to support that claim, but I’m not worried about that. I just want something different.”

He shifted anxiously, catching my drift. But he still asked, “What is it?”

I patted the spot next to me. “Come back here. Lie down.”

He hesitated for a moment but did as I said. I climbed over him again and sat on his laps.

“You know what I want,” I said, looking straight down at him.

“I do?” He smiled nervously.

“You’re too smart not to know.”

“You think too highly of me, Lassie.”

“I also know you’re anything but humble. So either you’re lying or you’re lying.”

He swallowed thickly and moved his gaze away.

“It’s up to you,” I said. My feeling betrayed my words—I wanted to be in charge of everything, hence the negotiation position—me above him, him under me. _Please say yes._ “Are you ready for this? You can say no. Or we can just leave it for next time,” I stuttered. My heart thumped inside its cage at my incompetence, not for fear of rejection this time, but for however I phrased it, it sounded like coercion to me. _Please say no._ No. _Please say yes._

“Next time?” he asked.

Great, it sounded like coercion to him too— _If you don’t let me fuck you now, I’ll still fuck you later. Sweet Justice, Lassiter, get off the poor boy!_

“Or not,” I replied, feigning casualty, caressing the smooth skin on both of his sides. “It’s up to you too.” _Where’s my gun? Right, you’re pointing it at his head!_

He squirmed underneath me, trying to get away from my tickling feather-like touch, and laughed. Oh, how much I wanted to pin him down with my whole body right then, hush him, and make him immobile, make him feel nothing but me. _Fight me. Say no to me. Let me hurt you for I am the last person in the whole wide world that would want to hurt you. Open your legs. Hold on to me while I’m hurting you. Lay your face against my chest and close your eyes but prick up your ears and listen to me carefully—when I say “shh,” you should hear “scream all you want.”_

Shawn looked out of the windows then back at me. Was he thinking about fleeing through the fire escape? “I don’t know how,” he said with a soft voice.

“You don’t have to,” I responded quickly. “I’ll do all the work. All you gotta do is lie there and enjoy the ride.”

He moved his hands up and down on my thighs mindlessly, or mindful of the question he had been dreading from the start. “Does it hurt? I heard it hurts.”

“Not very much.” The lie came too easy to serve my purpose. It unnerved me.

“Have you tried it yourself?”

“Yes.”

“Can I be the top tonight?”

He was delaying. _Just tell him no._ “Maybe next time,” I said. Bending over, I pecked him on the lips, hoping he would take it as an apology. I would love that actually. But not tonight. Tonight… _please allow me to be selfish, just let me feel like I own him._

“Could you close the curtains?” he asked, again checking the windows.

That demand I could certainly fulfill, considering what I was about to do to him, although I could have just pointed out we were on the fifth floor and no one would see us.

“Is that a yes?” I asked while heading back to bed. He was staring at the ceiling, the blanket pulled to his shoulder, his arms buried underneath. It couldn’t be the coldness he was feeling.

“On one condition,” he said, raising a finger before him, “—I get a sticker afterwards.” Seeing my face, he amended immediately, “Kidding! I’m kidding! I probably should say ‘joking,’ considering how sensitive you’re around this sore subject. Oh, come on, Lassie, laugh or not, those wrinkles are coming to get you either way. Hey, can I hug my bear while we’re doing it?”

I wanted to peel the sheet away, wrap him into a cocoon, and throw him out of the window. “Tread carefully, Shawn,” I said in a warning tone.

“Or what?”

I ignored his question and stalked off to the bathroom. I heard him asking again in the background, with more unease than the last time. Rifling through the drawers, I celebrated my win silently, picturing him powerless under my reign.

“Or what?” he repeated when I emerged from the bathroom. But his attention was quickly drawn to my right hand. “What is it?”

“Just some stuff.” I set the aloe vera gel and the condom on the nightstand. He threw the blanket off the bed, motioning me to come to him.

I threw his legs over my shoulder, pinned his wrists above his head, and pressed my body down to kiss him.

He turned his head away, dodging my mouth, giggling. “This is ridiculous,” he mumbled.

“What is?”

“This!” He gestured between us with his head. “This position.”

“You mean missionary?”

“That’s what it’s called? No wonder I don’t like it.”

“Why?”

“You’re literally on top of me.”

“Isn’t that the point?”

“I mean you were like a mountain crumbling down and you folded me like an origami. And you expect me to not run for my life when I’m about to be crushed into pulp?” he said. Then as if having an epiphany, he added, “Is that why girls seem less excited about sex than us?”

I was afraid he was backing down. “Which position do you like then?” I asked.

“Better to be kept in the dark.” He turned around to lie on his stomach.

“I can’t see your face this way.”

“You don’t need to,” he said into the pillow. Then he told me he was ready and I was free to do whatever I wanted. But that was far from the truth. If he found my approaching form intimidating in one way, he would find it intimidating in another. He just hadn’t realized it yet. He wasn’t prepared and neither was I. What propelled me to proceed despite that fact was more than sex drive at that point. In his case, I didn’t know what food poisoning he had growing up that made him stupid enough to let me do this to him.

As soon as I opened the lid of the gel, his butt tensed up and his hands clutched the pillowcase like it was a ring buoy and he was drowning, I the one who had pushed him into the vast ocean.

“Relax,” I said, cringing at the same time that it was the most worthless thing I could say.

He nodded, but his body didn’t listen to its master’s command and remained hostile to the stranger that was touching its private part with a clear intention of intruding.

“It’ll be a bit cold,” I said, as a warning that my finger was about to advance into an unknown territory possibly even to himself.

He hissed as my finger was only a knuckle deep inside of him, his shoulder blades protruding on his back like wings. “You said it wouldn’t hurt!” he accused then dropped his head back to the pillow.

“I said ‘not very much.’ I must have a high pain threshold.”

“Jerk,” he said in a light tone which I took as my permission to proceed.

Two fingers in, sweat broke out on his back, his thighs, every part of his skin I could lay my hands on. Miraculously, he didn’t make any sound after the first one. Looking up, I saw him mistreating my pillow by biting into it.

I hooked my fingers to push the button inside of him that would provoke a more visible or audible reaction and guarantee my satisfaction. His too, I hadn’t forgotten. He swore loudly and arched his back. Grabbing my wrist, he pulled my hand out. “Enough of the knock-knock joke, all right?” he said. “Just get on with it. I know who’s out there.”

That was a good idea, yeah…in Mars. Now adding to him being mentally unprepared, he would be physically unprepared as well? I should have used more logic than him, but the line seemed too long to wait politely at the end like a civilized person.

_Hey, you, sir, the last gentleman there, are those ants in your pants I see? You wanna cut in line? Fine by me. But the coffee probably would scorch the inside of your mouth off so are you sure?_

I coaxed the abused pillow away from him.

“I need it,” he lifted his head to protest.

I stacked it under his hip. “I need it here.” Lining my cock in between his cheeks, I thought I had the obligation to ask again, “Shawn…”

“It’s your royal highness,” Little Prince reminded me.

_Still a snob, I see._ “Your royal highness, permission to proceed.”

“Granted,” he said. “Just don’t get me pregnant.”

“Can’t promise.” That reminded me of the condom I had taken from the bathroom but didn’t have the brain capacity to remember.

He laughed, hearing the wrapper being torn open. “I thank you for your thorough consideration. Touched, Lassie. But seriously, you’re violating the dress code to this party.”

“I don’t know what kind of tutors the royal hires, but here’s a lesson to you, Little Prince: don’t fuck anyone who isn’t your longtime partner without protection, girls or guys.”

“Of course I know that,” he said. He offered no other explanation after that. He must have hated my patronizing tone. I would have taken him bareback, but there was a part of me that dreaded he would regret all of this and regret more he would if I didn’t do it the right way.

Lying down on top of him, I rounded both of my arms above his head and spread his legs with my knees. “Relax,” I reminded and warned again. This time I realized it was meant for me more than for him.

As soon as the tip of my cock penetrated him, his hip jerked away, his head bumped into my face. “Fuck, fuck, fuck…” he muttered, panting.

“That’s what I’m trying to do,” I said, amusement in my voice, my nose sore because of the impact.

“Sorry,” he said. “It just hurts more than I thought it would. Let’s try again. There won’t be an element of surprise this time.”

I tried to wave the guilt brewing in the pit of my stomach away and moved his hip back. He covered his hands on mine to prevent them from moving away.

“Probably better to hold me still,” he said, sounding casual. “Just as a precaution.”

“I don’t know…”

“Soldier on. You can do it.” He patted my hands. I tried to remember whether my first time was as weird as this—nope, nothing in my life was as weird as this.

I did as I was told but the road was still difficult to drive. My fingers had to dig into him, the heels of my hands had to press down because his body couldn’t help but flee again. He was grimacing, judging by the way he was grunting. His shiver put me on edge. I didn’t know whether my tremble resulted from the hotness now wrapped around me, leaving no space uncovered, or the simple fact he was trembling beneath me.

Everywhere I touched were goosebumps. I didn’t dare to move an inch even though I was seeing stars as he reflexively tightened around me again and again. “You okay?” I asked, releasing my hands, putting his head in the crooks of my arms again.

His face was buried in the mattress, hands clutching the sheet, knuckles white. He didn’t answer me.

“Shawn?” I whispered. I had to ask what I feared the answer to, “Do you want to stop?”

He arched his back and supported himself and me up with his arms, then he dropped straight onto the bed again, grumbling whenever he wasn’t catching his breaths.

“I can pull out now,” I said, unable to bear watching any more of this, although it awakened the wild part of me that urged me to stay where I was no matter what Shawn said, to push him down and take him anyway.

“Shut up,” he said under his breath. I almost didn’t hear him. “Just give me a minute.”

Thank god for that. As I shifted slightly so I could wait more comfortably for the minute to pass, he gave a violent shudder and a groan.

“I said a minute!” he yelled. He grabbed a fistful of my hair and yanked.

Yes, sir, I almost said. The impression Little Prince had given me was never bossy. Self-centered, yes, but not bossy. The sudden fresh air that passed into my lungs was like a second wind. I would now kneel and kiss his boots, let alone wait for a minute.

“What about now? Can I start moving now?” I asked again when I couldn’t hold it together anymore, when I assumed 24 hours had passed.

“Okay,” he said.

I kissed the back of his neck. His shoulders thrust up to shake away my lips, giggling at the tickling sensation again. His sensitivity would be the end of me. He strained to turn his head back so he could see me. It seemed like a reunion after a long time apart—I couldn’t even recognize him with all the lines imprinted on his face by the sheet and his half-lidded eyes.

He was pursing his lips.

“Where?” I asked like before. His smile guided me to the destination.

He moaned into my mouth as I gave him my first thrust. He fell onto the bed again, breaking our kiss. Sticking my chest on his back, I made his body mine and mine his. I felt like a kangaroo mom and him my baby in my pouch, unsure where his body ended and mine began. Would he be disturbed by the metaphor I used? _I just want to melt into you as you melt into me. Sorry, Shawn, if you look back one day and think I have a thing for vulnerable younger men, that’s because I do. No._ A _vulnerable younger man. I wouldn’t mind you calling me something we would both detest later—at least I could be the king for now._ _Perhaps you’d like to beg me to stop now? Give me a chance to comfort you while tormenting you harder. Beg me to stop?_

I kept spreading his legs apart with my knees because he kept closing them little by little.

“Lassie?” he said quietly, reaching his arm around me to caress my back, his head pillowing my arms.

“Mm?” My head was spinning as I slid into him repetitively, eyes tightly shut. I kissed the back of his head, smelled the compelling coconut scent from his hair, which in this unusually cold winter, redeemed summer in Santa Barbara for me.

After a long pause, he said, “Nothing.” That should have slowed me down then, had I not been so entranced by my own desire and the gripping sensation that had been collecting in my lower abdomen. Nothing usually meant everything to him.

As I rammed into him quicker and harder, he started getting restless under me. Tossed his head, writhed his body. His hand snuck in between his back and my stomach.

“Lassie…can—” he called out again. Can what? I didn’t hear or he didn’t get to say. His voice pushed me over the edge. As I thrust into him one last time and came, he whimpered then let out a sigh. I didn’t recognize then it had a high likelihood to be a sigh of relief for this coming to an end rather than a sigh of pleasure.

“You’re mine,” I whispered into his ear. Never once had I thought I would say that out loud to anyone, including myself. But lying in the pool of bliss where the softness of Little Prince would be my last possession if the world had ended then, I had to let him know.

“I’m yours,” he whispered back.

“You’re mine,” I said again.

With Shawn held tightly in my arms, I drifted asleep by his side. Later when it was still dark outside, I woke up. I found Shawn weeping, lying on his back, staring at the ceiling or nowhere but his own tears. His chest raised and fell at a rapid speed, which must have been what had brought me out of my slumber. Fear struck and took hold of me like a bolt of lightning. Sadly, it was a fear for myself rather than for him.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. His chin between my thumb and forefinger, I turned his head around so he could look at me.

He merely shook his head.

“Tell me,” I said. “Are you regretting what we’ve done?” _What do you mean by “What we’ve done?”_ I should have asked, “Do you hate what I did to you?”

He didn’t answer, didn’t even shake his head. He mused on my eyes as if I could read his mind, shoulder his burdens, and solve all his problems when in fact I just wanted to weep with him. I was the source of his problems. I was the evil man that traumatized his boyhood, whom he would resent for the rest of his life. So perhaps it wasn’t a distress call I received but a pleading signal asking me to let him go.

But I couldn’t let him go. This was Shawn, my Shawn, my Little Prince. I finally had him. He belonged to me and only me. I should be the only one who was allowed to touch him, fuck him, pleasure him, hurt him…

Then it hit me—he was going to ask me to let him go…before he said “nothing,” when he put his hand between us, when he said “can—”

In spite that I had been fantasizing about him doing that during the whole deal, somehow I missed all the signals. I must have been the cruelest man born on the Earth. I wanted his forgiveness. Did I deserve his forgiveness? Did I have to apologize for something I would do again as long as he chose to climb into my bed again? Did he still like me? I couldn’t stand the idea of him hating me.

Eventually, he spoke up, breaking the silence that had been eating me alive, “I’m bleeding down there.”

I lifted the blanket off us. He curled up immediately, trying to hide his junk and ass from my eyesight. He blushed as if what had happened earlier between us didn’t count. “Let me see,” I said, sitting up.

“No! No…” He grabbed my arm, preventing me from moving south.

“Shawn, I’ve seen it all. I’ve been in there.”

“Just don’t.”

“Are you in pain?”

“A little sore.”

“Just let me check how serious it is.” I shook away his hand then bent and parted his knees.

“Don’t look!” he said anxiously, shooting up to push my head away.

It was too late. I had seen it and touched it with a finger.

He threw himself back onto the bed, his head almost bumping against the headboard, and started sobbing uncontrollably. He tried to smother the noise with the back of his hand but failed miserably.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” I comforted, climbing upward. “There isn’t much blood. It happens sometimes.”

“I told you ‘Don’t look!’ What part of it didn’t you understand?!” he shouted.

I didn’t understand the sudden embarrassment that had turned him into a furious and unstable mountain lion. I knew he was insecure about his body sometimes as he had told me so after that fishing incident, but why it would manifest itself now with its full force was beyond my comprehension. Was he being moody only because he was still a teenager?

“I just want to make sure you’re okay,” I countered.

“I’m fine,” he said, his voice icy. He turned his head away from me.

The tears glistened on his face. My hand reached out to wipe them away on its own accord. Leaning down, I licked the corners of his eyes. I was glad to find he didn’t think it revolting and evade me.

It was warm and salty, like the seawater that laps onto the beach every day, unpredictable as well. I wanted to drink him dry. Why was the boy all summer?

“Do you think I should go to the hospital?” he asked, holding back his sobs as best as he could, apparently having been mulling over the question for some time now.

Fear seized me again. The gear in my head started rolling: If I take him to the ER and the staff suspects something, they’d call the police or contact his dad. With him being a minor and all, it doesn’t matter whether he sells me out or not. Next thing I know, I’d be thrown in jail or a dead mutilated body under the Pacific Ocean, depending on who catches me first. Even if I don’t take him to the ER, at his age, he’s probably still seeing a pediatrician…Kill me now.

“It’s not that serious,” I said, trying to convince him and myself. The truth was I had no idea how serious it was because I was no fucking doctor or anal sex expert! “I have some numbing cream if you want.”

He nodded.

Selfish monster, I cursed myself silently as I fetched the cream for him. _You’ve ruined him. He’d never be the same again thanks to you. His parents had sheltered him from countless evils out there so he grew up safe and sound a healthy, energetic, intelligent boy, then you came along. Voila! Everything’s ruined. You just have to do those dirty deeds to him to satisfy yourself. Have you no decency? Why are you picturing fucking him again?!_

“Do you want me to do it?” I waved the cream before him.

He nodded. “Since you’ve already looked.” He hesitated for a while, unsure which position he should get into. I kept myself from giving instructions. Eventually, he chose to kneel and raise his butt toward me.

“Is this okay?” he asked, his ears flushed.

_Is this okay?!_ What kind of question was that?! I was almost hard again. I squeezed some cream on my fingers then applied it on the rim of his pink hole that was tinged by spots of blood. “Should I put some inside as well?” I asked him.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Should you?”

I didn’t. I put the cream on the counter and told him I could help him later if he wanted.

When we went back to bed, we laid side by side wide awake. His mind was occupied just like mine. Why when our heads were on the same pillow, our thoughts couldn’t clash and reveal themselves to each other? I wanted the boy to know everything about me, including my thoughts now, to see all the apologies I couldn’t bring myself to say, to own everything I was. No more secrets. Just me, stripped to nothing but my soul. If I was lucky enough, he would get naked in front of me too. Put down his shield and show me his puffy Nessie skin, knowing I wouldn’t mock him. I wanted to believe he wouldn’t mock me either.

Our hands bumped into each other under the blanket. I clasped his without a second to lose. He turned around and burrowed into my chest like he had done in the beginning. I pulled him closer.

“Lassie…,” he said. “I’m so afraid.”

It amazed me someone so proud like him would admit this. I asked whether he was afraid of the bleeding. He said no.

“Then what are you afraid of?”

“I don’t know. I’m just afraid.”

My stomach burned, echoing Shawn’s sentiment. “I’m afraid too,” I said.

“What’s your excuse?”

“That you’re not mine.”

He must have heard I was on the verge of tears because I heard him choke up. “I am yours. All yours. My nose, my eyes, my tush…You can have everything.”

I chuckled. “I would love to have your tush.”

“I love you, Lassie,” he said, with resolution, with conviction, as a 17-year-old who probably didn’t have an ounce of understanding what love is. Then again, I couldn’t say I understand better.

I believed I loved him back. More than he loved me, I felt. Why couldn’t I say it back? Did I feel so loved that I’ve lost words for my own love? “I’m losing you” was what finally came out of my mouth.

“You’re not!” He sounded harsh. “Let me stay with you. Just take me away…”

“You’re nuts.”

“I’m begging you! I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll be your wife. I’ll learn to cook. I’ll tie your tie. I’ll be the bottom all the time if you want. Just take me away. I don’t want to be here anymore. I hate him…I hate Florida.”

I wanted to laugh at what he had said but it only made me more heartbroken. I didn’t care he might have slept with me just to put a roof over his head. The illusion of being longed was enough for me because I had longed for him. I felt belonged. I hoped he did as well, even with this crazy interpretation of what someone would expect from a relationship.

“Don’t lose me,” he said when I didn’t respond. He hugged me tighter. “Don’t lose me.”

Little Prince didn’t live in the reality. I did. But that night, with him in my arms like my own teddy bear, I wanted to protect him from it at all cost. I protected myself from it. I told him a made-up story, envisioned our alternate futures if we eloped together tomorrow morning. How pissed his dad would be, I said. We laughed, both picturing Spencer’s contorted angry face.

* * *

Little Prince went back home by the end of the week. I packed his everything while he laid on the bed, wriggling his foot on his propped-up knee. He didn’t say anything, didn’t help, just watched me with his intense gaze as I did all the work.

I dropped by his house several times afterward. I just never went inside. I hoped he would make out my car on the street from the upstairs’ bedroom and come visit me. He never even called.

I sent a card to him in March to wish him a happy 18th birthday. Not sure he even got it.

The day he and his father would move to Florida was the last time I had seen him. He was sitting at the back of his dad’s truck, staring at his shoes as if contemplating how far away they would take him if he decided to run like Forrest Gump. Hey, that was the movie we watched that day! But it doesn’t matter now. I could remember every syllable he uttered but it still wouldn’t change the fact he’s gone.

I approached him when his father went back inside the house.

He beamed and sprang to his feet as soon as he made out it was me who was in front of him. He must have thought I was here to be his savior. I felt guilty for letting him down again.

He plunged at me, throwing his limbs around me like a monkey. I hugged him back, kissed him hungrily. How much I wanted him in my arms forever and ever.

“I knew you’d come,” he said.

“I didn’t even know that.”

I told him I was here to say goodbye. He went silent. We all knew it was farewell.

“Okay, goodbye,” he threw out then climbed up the truck again, his voice low and stabbing. Why did he have to be so stone-hearted? I was the one who was supposed to be this way, not him. I was the Medusa that had gazed into his tender human soul.

Detective Spencer came out of the house then. “I’m sorry,” I mouthed at Shawn. Those were the last words I said to him, filled with regret and heartache, loud enough to deafen me but strangely without sound for him to hear, a regret I could do nothing about but stand by and watch as he was wrenched away from me by the flow of both of our lives.

They drove away, leaving me standing alone in the middle of the street under the slanting yellow beam of the sinking sun, with only an empty house where he grew up at my side comforting me, tormenting me.

Thus ended the story of me and the boy I once longed for. I have since gotten married, then divorced, fallen in love, then out of love. But never have I ever felt so belonged again since Shawn, my night and day, my curse, my savior…my Little Prince.

* * *

“Shawn! Shawn!”

Lassiter’s voice brought Shawn out of his reverie. He blinked and scanned around. They were at home…unmistakably their home—photos after photos of suspects, him and Gus hosting a food eating contest in front of their Psych office, Juliet pointing a gun directly at the camera, him and Lassiter with their newly adopted Beagle “Lassie Jr.” in the park, Lassie Jr. licking his dad’s face…Lassiter was eating breakfast while scrolling through the latest news on his phone. _Definitely not 1995_ , Shawn swallowed thickly and thought.

“You’ve been staring at me for half an hour,” Lassiter said. “It’s like you were possessed. Don’t—don’t say by a spirit! What were you thinking?”

“I was you,” Shawn blurted out.

“Excuse me?”

“I was running a story in my head. I was you. You fell in love with me,” Shawn explained. “You were quite infatuated with me. You were like obsessed.”

“Not narcissistic at all, Shawn.”

“You called me Little Prince.”

“Am I a prince too? Oh! Am I a king? Wait a minute…I’m not Little Princess, am I?”

“No. You were just you.”

“Oh,” Lassiter sighed. “Where’s the fun in that?”

Shawn shot him a fleeting smile then looked down at his plate. He scrambled his scrambled eggs, never spooning them into his mouth. The last time Lassiter had taken him out to breakfast was two years ago. Habits change, he told himself. But why did they have to change?

“You left me. I was your everything but you left me,” Shawn said, breaking the brief silence. “Tragic ending. You shouldn’t have left me.”

“Why did I do that?”

“I had to go to Florida.”

“So you left me.”

“Tsk! Potato, tomato, gelato.”

Lassiter shook his head. For him, a lot of things are better left unsaid—that’s the beauty of life, but for Shawn, he needs everything laid on the table. He had evolved, Juliet said, because he had begun to tell the truth of his heart. Bull. He had regressed. But being with Shawn, he was willing to accommodate.

“I won’t leave you, you know,” Lassiter said. “I don’t know why that version of me in your head did. Remember that next time you decide to space out and make up another story. You better make it more realistic.”

“Lassie,” Shawn started slowly, “just a thought, would you have slept with me if we had met, say…when I was 17?”

Lassiter’s fork froze in midair. “Why do you ask?”

“Can’t you just answer me?”

Lassiter thought for a while, knowing it must have had something to do with the fake him Shawn impersonated in his head. He cleared his throat. “No.”

“Not even if you were in love with me?”

“I’d never fall in love with something illegal.”

Sensing his reply was a tad too brusque, Lassiter tried to mend, “Obviously, you’re not a thing. I mean it would’ve been illegal for me to do such a thing. Not do—you. I don’t—”

Shawn sprang to his feet, walked over to straddle Lassiter’s laps, covering his babbling mouth with his hand. “But—17. 17! Think about it. Picture it. What if I had thrown myself on you?”

Lassiter cleared his throat, his suits all of a sudden too tight. “I would’ve said, ‘I’m flattered. But no, thank you.’ ’Cause that’s what a sensible adult does.”

Shawn groaned in frustration, burying his head on Lassiter’s shoulder. He took in a breath then snapped his head up. “Just be honest with me here, Lassie. Lay it bare. 17 isn’t 18. 17 is dangerous. One step wrong, then poof—you’re in jail, another poof—you’re killed by my dad. 17 is forbidden, risky. That’s what makes it tempting and arousing and fun. Just picture a 17-year-old me. Everything on me would be fresh, huh. I hadn’t even had sex yet when I was 17! Why not listen to your heart and fuck me already?!”

Lassiter smiled in bewilderment, amused. “Why does it matter so much whether I would’ve fucked you when you were 17? You’re not 17. We can’t turn back the clock. Or do you have a time machine now? And you’re the one who loves risks, not me.”

Shawn kissed him softly. It seemed to have a sobering effect on him. “You’re right. You’re right,” he said, eyes closed, forehead to forehead with Lassiter.

“What brought this on?”

“I found this when I was brushing my teeth.” Shawn turned his head and pointed at a spot above his right ear.

“What?” Lassiter squinted his eyes.

“Look closely.”

“I don’t see anything.”

“A gray hair!”

Then Lassiter saw it—buried under trillions of brown hair timidly was a lonely gray one, alone in the crowd with no brothers to turn to.

“Oh, don’t be so vain,” Lassiter said, half-laughing. “If you care that much, just pull it out.”

“But I could still see it. It would be imprinted in my brain forever. And this is the third one I’ve found this month.”

“Well, get ready for an army of them to come. They don’t stop with just one. Trust me, I’ve got experience.” He turned his head to show his salt and pepper.

“Yours are lovely. But—”

“But what? It’s okay for me to be mortal but you thought you’d never age? One day, poof, you’d be 17 again?”

“That’s basically my whole plan.”

Lassiter palmed Shawn’s gloomy face. “Hey, I’d screw you when you’re a hundred.”

“I give that answer eight out of ten. Still not exactly what I’d like to hear.”

“How about this?” Lassiter stood up abruptly, two hands under Shawn’s legs carrying him up. He headed over to their bedroom with Shawn clamped to his front. “I’d screw you all day, every day, till the end of the day, even when the Earth has become dust, like you’re perpetually that 17-year-old rebellious, idiotic, virile boy who knows nothing better than to knock boots with the man who would rip you apart with a blink of an eye.”

“I’m all yours,” Shawn said.

“You’re all mine,” Lassiter echoed.


End file.
